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ANTH 2130 6.0: Anthropology Through the Visual: Images of Resistance/Irresistible Images

ANTH 2130 6.0: Anthropology Through the Visual: Images of Resistance/Irresistible Images

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AP/ANTH 2130 6.00 Anthropology Through the Visual: Images of Resistance/Irresistible Images

Course Trailer

SUMMER 2024 (Study Abroad)

Course Director: Z. Hirji - zhirji@yorku.ca

How are images a form of communication?  How do photographs, political cartoons, memes and visual art embody social meaning and interaction? In this course, students are introduced to a variety of visual forms of representation including, but not limited to films, advertisements, public art, cartoons, graphic

Drawing upon images produced by anthropologists, journalists, filmmakers, photographers, artists, and activists, this seminar-style course asks questions about how the ways in which the making, display, and consumption of images shape and challenge understandings of self, community, and others. Topics will include race, ethnicity, nationality, globalization, power, authority, politics, religion, gender, class, and sexuality. 

Based in Lisbon, this course will explore the visual worlds and vibrant visual lives of the city and it's diverse people. Teaching will be undertaken experientially through walks through historic neighbourhoods, coastal parks, eco-zones, industrial sites, and other locations, visits to galleries, museums, archives, and art centres, and conversational sessions with local artists, activists, and journalists.

Using ethnography, film, video, visual art, photography and new media students will explore issues of race, ethnicity, nationality, globalization, power, authority, politics, religion, gender, class, and sexuality in the context of Lisbon’s history and contemporary life. For their final assignment, students will produce an independent creative project such as a visual diary, sound walk, or multi-media artwork.

Note: this is a Study Abroad course that requires enrolment permission. Please visit this page or contact studyabr@yorku.ca for more information.

NOT OFFERED DURING 2023-2024 ACADEMIC TERM

How are images a form of communication?  How do photographs, political cartoons, memes and visual art embody social meaning and interaction? In this course, students are introduced to a variety of visual forms of representation including, but not limited to films, advertisements, public art, cartoons, graphic novels, and social media to understand how the visual conveys cultural lives and experiences.  We will start with the politics of representation and authority, particularly who is made visible, who is rendered invisible, and who is occluded in visual representations. We will address anthropology’s role in othering and objectifying various groups of people. Then, we will untangle the relationship between public memory, “truth”, and “cancel culture” and the conditions that contextualize the production and defacement of national monuments and memorials. We will unpack how and why movies, street art, graffiti, and other visual technologies produce, and are produced by meaning, fantasy, and desire of and for various publics. In the later section of the course, we will cover the potential of anthropology as research creation by assessing the discipline’s visual methods for ethnographic documentation.  We will conclude by discussing how certain groups, such as Idle No More and Black Lives Matter, are creating political interventions through social media and gaining traction as political social movements.

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